On Saturday, Oct. 24, the Ellsworth cross country runners competed at the 2020 regional hosted by Norton High School. It was the coldest race of the season, with temperatures right around the freezing mark. In order to be guaranteed a spot at the state meet in Wamego, Oct. 31, runners must finish in the overall top 10 or be a member of one of the top 2 teams.

Junior Kirsten Meier was not able to compete due to injury, which was unfortunate because she had been running overall times that were faster than last year, and her times were getting fast as the season progressed. We had been chasing a personal best all season, and she seemed poised to get that at Norton, which was a fairly fast course.

Byron Johnson had one of his best races of the season, and maybe of his career. His 19:42 time was the best time of the season, and I’m happy with how, over the last 2-3 races, his second and third mile times have improved drastically. He has been working on improving the latter part of his races and working on more consistency and has done just that. Even though he came up short of qualifying for state, he ended his season on a very high note with some excellent prospects to build on for next year.

Jonathan Spachek finished his four-year career as an EHS runner on Saturday only about 40 seconds off his personal best time set at Wamego last year. This career includes a run at the State meet last year as a member of the regional champion team, and saw his overall times go down by over seven minutes over those four years. Over the years, Jonathan was a worker who really came into his own as a runner as a junior, and continued that success and accomplishment as a senior.

Grady Mueller concluded his six-year career as a member of the Ellsworth Junior-Senior High School cross country team running his fifth best career time, only 38 seconds off of his personal best time. His times had become more consistent over the last couple years. With a little work, his mile times improved over the last four years, with consistently faster third mile times through this 2020 season, one of the goals we’d set for the season. Colton Bettenbrock struggled

Colton Bettenbrock struggled a little in the last race of his freshman season. After turning in a strong first mile, he began to tighten up and never got back into his pace. We went through something similar at the league run too, which was unexpected given his strong early season finishes and times, and his accomplishments as a middle school runner. He’s a dedicated runner, running throughout the offseason, so I’m confident that he’ll be back in fine form in 2021.

Senior Braden Schulte was a six-year member of the EJSHS cross country team and after this season will be a four-year letterman as member of the high school varsity squad. In his four years, he’d made two trips to state, was instrumental on the regional championship teams of 2018 and 2019, and was someone the team respected as team leader. Unfortunately, he was not allowed to run at the 2020 regional due to contact tracing quarantine. This handed our team a triple whammy. Firstly, as a senior, this would have been his last regional and a chance at his third year at state, in a season where he was posting faster average times week after week. Secondly, he would have qualified for state, given his previous times and placings, and given the seventh place finish of a Minneapolis runner he competed a few seconds behind at League the week before. Since you need at least five runners to make a team … with him out, we were down to only four runners, not able to field a full team. The EHS boys team had regional championships in 2018 and 2019, and were looking forward to competing as a team in 2020. In spite of everything, the four boys went to Norton and competed very well.

This was certainly a different season for sure. I’d like to give a shout out to the kids attending EJSHS. I’m so proud of how they have done everything they’ve been asked with COVID precautions, and have maintained great attitudes in spite of the disruption of normalcy. To all of those who have gone out of their way to make sure we can have as normal a fall as possible — living clean, masking up, using good sense, etc. — I say, thank you. 2020 has been anything but normal and has taken many things from many over the last few months.

Over the last week, we were again reminded of just how arbitrarily that our opportunities and aspirations can be taken away through no fault of our own. The results from Norton are:

Boys Race (46 runners total)

• Byron Johnson, 19th, 19:42.0.

• Jonathan Spachek, 29th, 20:33.2.

• Grady Mueller, 40th, 22:37.4.

• Colton Bettenbrock 46th, 24:09.9.

"Over the last week, we were again reminded of just how arbitrarily that our opportunities and aspirations can be taken away through no fault of our own."